Arkansas Lt. Gov. Bill Halter made waves Monday morning when he announced he’s challenging Sen. Blanche Lincoln in the May 18 Democratic primary. Halter is a former Bill Clinton appointee, working at the Office of Management and Budget for six years and later as the Senate-approved deputy commissioner of Social Security. He’s already reportedly received significant fundraising pledges from progressive and labor organizations, though his campaign will likely focus more on populist themes over the next two months. Following Colorado and Pennsylvania, Arkansas is now the third state in which a Democratic incumbent is facing a serious primary challenge.

Here is what Halter had to say in an interview Tuesday with RealClearPolitics:

RCP: It’s rare for a Senate incumbent to lose a primary. Why do you think you’ll be able to defeat Blanche Lincoln this year?

HALTER: I don’t view this so much as running against someone as I view it as running for the office of United States Senate. We’re going to put a positive, affirmative campaign out there -- a set of issues we think need to be addressed. My take on all this is that it’s not really about running against someone as it is running for the office. In terms of the ability to go out and win -- this is why you have campaigns. You go out and you take your issues to voters, and you put them out there and people respond or they don’t. But so far they are responding extremely well. We’re 31 hours and 35 minutes into this campaign and all the things that have happened have been extraordinarily positive -- in fact, way beyond what my team or I could have reasonably expected.

RCP: Two Democratic congressmen are retiring and Lincoln was considered one of the most vulnerable incumbents in the country even before you entered the race. What’s happening in Arkansas this year?

HALTER: I think what’s happening in Arkansas is the same thing that’s happening across the country -- that people who live outside of the Washington Beltway have come to the increasing view that special interests are blocking changes that the public wants and that special interests have too big a say over what happens in Washington. That in general is what’s going to be one of the main, consistent threads through the political dynamic this year. Approval of Congress, according to Gallup and others, is at an all-time low. The economy is in tough shape; folks just saw hundreds of billions of dollars of their taxes going into bailing out financial institutions, Wall Street investment banks; and unemployment at a 25-year high. All of that going on, and despite the expenditure of hundreds of billions of dollars in bail-out funds, credit is still tight for small businesses. So Main Street is suffering. All this is going on. Then folks wake up and read in the newspaper that investment bankers on Wall Street just pulled down tens of billions of dollars in bonuses. And folks out here say, ‘What’s going on? Who’s on my side?’

RCP: Even though you’re the lieutenant governor and were a Clinton appointee, you’re considered anti-Democratic establishment. Is that something you see as an advantage this year -- a tough year for Democrats?

HALTER: I don’t know if any of this is an advantage or disadvantage, and I don’t really worry about that, to be honest with you. We go out and push an agenda, just like we did with the Scholarship Lottery. The insiders here were not in favor of that -- they blocked it during the legislative session. So we took it straight to the people. We went out, we got 135,000 signatures of Arkansans, we got it on the ballot. Then another special interest group decided they’d try to knock it off the ballot. So we had to go all the way to the Arkansas Supreme Court to keep it on the ballot, which we successfully did. It then got to the voters and here’s the clincher -- almost two out of three Arkansas voters voted for it. It carried all 75 counties. Now, the day before the election I could only find 17 out of 135 members of the Legislature who would publicly say they were for it. The day after the election, I couldn’t find a one who was opposed. Not one. And it passed unanimously just a couple months later in the Legislature -- 100 votes in the House, 35 votes in the Senate. Now, the lesson I draw from that is: If you take a principled stand, if you push hard, if you go straight at special interest groups that are blocking these changes, and get things to the people -- people will respond and then other elected officials will respond as well. And that’s what’s happened here. And a result of that, this year 28,000 Arkansas families are going to get college scholarships -- $5,000 a year -- to go to colleges in Arkansas. That’s $20,000 a student. So a middle class family with two children planning on going to college just saw a $40,000 benefit to them without their taxes going up.

RCP: You’ve talked about the gridlock in Washington. What was your take on President Obama’s health care summit last week?

HALTER: To be honest with you, I did not get to watch much of it live at all. I did read about it. We were in legislative session here when that went on, and I was working on getting that scholarship program finalized -- so I didn’t get a chance to watch much of it. My overall take on all this is: You try to operate bi-partisanly when you can -- you bring people together when you can. I feel like I’ve succeeded on doing that on some issues down here. We had a health care clinic here in Little Rock -- a free health clinic for those people without health insurance. In three weeks we brought together over a thousand volunteers -- people from all walks of life. We provided medical care for a day for a thousand Arkansans that didn’t have health insurance; linked them up to sources of continuing care -- free health clinics around the state. We did it without making it a political event. People from all different political points of view, including about health care reform, came together to do this on a Saturday when there was a Razorback football game in Little Rock and it was the first day of duck hunting season. You know, you can bring people together around these things and we did that. And I’m proud of that. And I’m proud of at that session, people said we’re not going to talk politics today. Whatever our views, that’s not why we’re here. We’re here to help these Arkansans who could use some help with health care on this particular day.

RCP: Massachusetts Sen. Scott Brown has 200,000 miles on his now-famous pickup truck. Your pickup was featured in your announcement video. How many miles do you have on yours?

HALTER: My truck has -- let’s see, next oil change is at 88,000 miles -- so right now we’re at 86,000 miles.